Prince de Galles Hotel

The mission of the “Prince de Galles” hotel, which belongs to the international Marriott Group, is perfection down to the last detail. To achieve this goal, it draws on a rich tradition of excellence in service, amenities and ambiance. In the future, this tradition will be supported by technology from Kieback&Peter to ensure that every guest feels as comfortable as possible – with smart and customized closed-loop control systems for heating, ventilation and air conditioning. The biggest challenge for Kieback&Peter’s technicians was to adhere to the extremely tight schedule with absolutely firm completion deadlines. After all, the hotel should not be out of operation any longer than planned.

159 rooms, 44 suites, a foyer, restaurants, bars, a spa, a fitness center and countless other secondary rooms needed to be integrated into a new building automation system from Kieback&Peter. Each guest should be able to individually set the temperature of their home away from home. At the same time, the hotel wanted to centrally view and control these individually set values in order to prevent loss of comfort in case of user error. For Kieback&Peter, this meant combining heating, ventilation and air conditioning into a unified, modern, energy-efficient system. 

For Nicolas Tellier of the Paris branch of Kieback&Peter, the first task in the hotel project was to make the impossible possible: In order to complete all the building automation work on time, he had to use the narrow time windows allowed by the construction schedule extremely efficiently. His solution: a 24-hour operation with two teams at the construction site. In addition to specialists from the Paris branch, Patrick Octor’s team of technicians from the Lyon branch of Kieback&Peter also assisted with the project. The result: Kieback&Peter completed the entire building automation system for the “Prince de Galles” hotel on time and in accordance with the contract. In addition to the demanding schedule, the experts from Kieback&Peter also had to overcome numerous technical challenges. To come up with the best solutions to specific problems, the teams collaborated closely with the general contractor in charge.

At the heart of Kieback&Peter’s building automation system for the “Prince de Galles” hotel is the Neutrino BMS building management system. It operates as the central control and monitoring software, runs on a server in the building’s equipment room and communicates with all the building services via cabling/IP. A flat screen monitor with an intuitive graphic user interface displays all components and values of the entire system. This allows the facility managers to conveniently view the parameters of all plant components and adjust them if necessary. The computer in the hotel’s main office is also connected to the Neutrino BMS over the network. Hotel management can therefore ensure, for example, that rooms do not cool down if guests accidentally set their room controller too low. The management can access and correct the values from the convenience of their office. The Kieback&Peter system also prevents disruptions in comfort in the case of technical malfunctions: If there is a fault in one of the plant components, for example a damper actuator in the ventilation system, the Neutrino BMS automatically sends a message to the facility management’s cell phone. This ensures fast response times no matter when the fault occurs.

While the Neutrino BMS control and monitoring software acts as the virtual user interface for the building automation system, information centers throughout the hotel work hard behind the scenes. They handle the physical switching operations of the plants. They are located in eleven switch cabinets, which are distributed throughout the building. These information centers employ the powerful and flexible DDC4200 and DDC4002 controllers from Kieback&Peter. They communicate with the Neutrino BMS, with each other and with field devices located at approximately 5,000 physical data points. Gateways also operate in the information centers. They convert the control signals from the hotel’s third-party controllers into digital signals for the DDCs.

The actual work of the Kieback&Peter building automation system in the “Prince de Galles” hotel is performed by field devices, i.e. sensors and actuators that are distributed throughout the building. The sensors, such as volume flow sensors in the ventilation system, record current data and send it to the DDC automation stations. The actuators, such as positioning actuators in the heating system, execute control commands from the DDCs. The building automation system is designed as a unified system to ensure that the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems operate with maximum energy efficiency: It makes sure that the exact amount of energy required at each location in the hotel is always available. This ensures that the guests are always comfortable – which is the top priority of this luxury hotel in the city of love.